9 myths
After Joshua died, Israel needed a leader. God's method was a purity test followed by lots, and the man selected was almost nobody's first guess.
Kikanos came home from a war he had won and found his own gates shut. It took nine years, a king's death, and a flock of starving birds to open them.
An axe head slipped and a man fell dead. The killer ran for a city of refuge while the goel hadam closed the road behind him.
A man lay dying in a ruin and a second man stood over him holding a wet knife. Yehudah ben Tabbai was the only person who saw it, and one is not two.
A man who spent his life hunting true justice finds a cottage where every flame is a soul, and his own has burned almost to the wick.
Orpah kissed her and took the road back to Moab. Ruth's hands stayed on the older woman's sleeve. Neither of them was carrying bread.
At the final reckoning the nations crowd in for Torah's wages, kick apart the one booth God grants them, and the whole account falls to a single line.
A necromancer squeezes a dead man's voice from his armpits while a starving student's breath of Torah climbs past the sky toward Heaven.
A plaintiff drags the Hasmonean king into court, and Simeon ben Shetah orders the crowned monarch to rise and answer like any defendant.
